'Acedia, Tristitia and Sloth: Early Christian Forerunners to Chronic Ennui' by Ian Irvine, copyright, 1998-2013 all

rights reserved.
1

Acedia, Tristitia and Sloth: EARLY
CHRISTIAN FORERUNNERS TO
CHRONIC ENNUI
By Ian Irvine (Hobson)

Copyright, Dr Ian Irvine, 1998-2013 all rights reserved. [NB: An earlier version of this essay appeared in Humanitas
(US) and has been widely distributed on the WWW including being linked to from the Wikipedia article on Acedia -
since the late 1990s. A version also appeared in The Angel of Luxury and Sadness: the Emergence of the Normative
Ennui Cycle, Booksurge, 2001 currently available from Amazon.com and other online booksellers]


Images (which are in the public domain): Melancholia, by Charpentier, 1901 and Acedia by Hieronymus
Wierix, 16
th
C.

Publisher: Mercurius Press, Australia, 2013. NB: This article is published at Scribd as part of a series of
articles on Chronic Ennui, and other similar maladies of the subject, in historical and contemporary
settings.















'Acedia, Tristitia and Sloth: Early Christian Forerunners to Chronic Ennui' by Ian Irvine, copyright, 1998-2013 all
rights reserved.
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In this article I want to focus on the relevance of early Christian
writings on acedia and tristitia to some of the primary modern and
postmodern maladies of the subject, i.e, chronic ennui, alienation,
estrangement, disenchantment, angst, neurosis, etc.. The focus will be
on the 'chronic ennui cycle' which has been written about extensively
by Steiner (1971), Bouchez (1973), Kuhn (1976), Healy (1984), Klapp
(1986) and Spacks (1995).
1
It can be described as cycle of boredom
and addiction which robs individuals of meaning and a sense of the
lan vitale. It is my argument that this cycle has undergone various
mutations of form over the millennia. Many of the writers mentioned
above have plotted its course of development from classical times to
the present. Such discussions begin with descriptions of taedium vitae,
luxuria and the horror loci as supplied to us by Roman philosophers and writers such as
Lucretius, Petronius and Seneca. They also encompass analysis of the spiritual illnesses of acedia
and tristitia written about by the Desert Fathers as well as the various emotional and medical
conditions described by Medieval and Early Modern poets and medical professionals, e.g.
saturnine melancholy, spleen, fits of the mothers and 'The English Malady'.
Due largely to the immense socio-cultural changes that struck Europe in the nineteenth
century the problem of chronic ennui (sometimes termed 'the spleen', hypp, languer, nerves and
disenchantment) inevitably became a major theme (if not obsession) for Romantic and realist
poets and thinkers. By the late nineteenth century it became tangled up with the concept of
'degeneration' and also with fin de sicle cultural phenomena. By that stage it signified a
particular kind of subjective suffering brought about by prolonged exposure to certain types of
social institutions and socio-cultural stresses. In short it was associated with the costs to the
subject of urbanisation, bureaucratisation and the industrial revolution. In a sense then, the
concept was used to illustrate a dark side to modernity. The Decadents, as well as later modernist
poets, writers, artists, culture critics and philosophers made use of it in speaking about concepts
like alienation, reification, absurdity, aboulie, anomie, desacralisation, angst, bad faith, neurosis,
character armouring and so on. In this short essay I will consider the contributions of the Early
Christian Fathers to our modern conceptions of 'chronic boredom'. I will pay particular attention
to the problem of the 'ennui cycle'.

Some Modern Descriptions of the Ennui Cycle

From the beginning of the eighteenth century the French idea of chronic ennui signified a
particular kind of subjective suffering. At the deepest level the idea signified a cycle of subjective
discontent, a cycle that - at least at the symptom level - progressed perpetually through three
distinct phases: 1) A stage of anxious boredom, of nameless objectless anxiety, which was
accompanied by fantasies of release from that anxiety. This mood, in due course, gave way to a
stage two (2) characterised by bursts of frantic activity designed to defeat or flee from the inner
feelings of discontent characteristic of the previous stage. This activity had as its goal the denial
of the previous feelings by immersion in various more or less repetitive (sometimes absurd)
habits. This flurry of activity gave way to (3) a stage of psychospiritual numbness which allowed
a person to feel temporarily free from the anxieties and impulsive acting out typical of the
previous periods. We may see this third stage as a state of non-being similar to that experienced

1
George Steiner, In Bluebeard's Castle (1971); Madeleine Bouchez, L'Ennui (1973); Reinhard Kuhn, The
Demon of Noontide: Ennui in Western Literature (1976); Sean Desmond Healy, Boredom, Self and Culture
(1984); Orrin Klapp, Overload and Boredom (1986) and Patricia Spacks, Boredom (1995).

'Acedia, Tristitia and Sloth: Early Christian Forerunners to Chronic Ennui' by Ian Irvine, copyright, 1998-2013 all
rights reserved.
3
by the heroin or smack addict, the sex addict, the gambler, the food addict, or the drugged patient
in a psychiatric ward etc.
2

This cycle need not be particularly spectacular, the ritualistic activities of the second stage,
for example, may revolve around hundreds of routine actions, activities, sayings
(rationalisations), thoughts etc. which in combination act to keep the subject fundamentally
disconnected from more wholesome experiences of selfhood.
We may list the various specific symptoms attached to the ennui cycle. Although such
symptoms are experienced differently by different people, i.e. according to gender, ethnicity,
class, age etc. the core description of the malaise nevertheless seems to reveal a certain degree of
consistency across social positionings and, as we shall see with the writings of the Desert Fathers,
across time. The core symptoms, as described historically, follow (note: only some of these need
be present alongside the cycle detailed above to warrant a diagnosis of chronic ennui):
1. States/feelings of subjective worthlessness and meaninglessness.
2. Feelings/intimations that the subject is missing out on life including the feeling that
time is a burden and that one is old before ones time.
3. A sense of being periodically possessed by certain malign impulses/forces over which
one has little or no effective control.
4. Feelings that the subject is estranged from/dispossessed of an authentic/healthy self -
that is, a sense that the way one experiences oneself in the world seems to be merely an
act for others.
5. Feelings of revulsion toward, or obsessive fascination with, ones own body and bodily
functions or with the bodies and bodily functions of others. (Various social and cultural
commentators on modernism, e.g. Ihab Hassan, have described a particular state of
ambivalence toward the realm of the feminine, the female body and the specifically
female biological functions.)
6. Impulses to act violently or maliciously towards others, towards ones self or towards
the world in general. These may be extreme or petty - indeed pettiness as manifested in
moods of jealousy, envy, backbiting, greed, etc. are features of the ennui cycle and are
connected to the nineteenth century critique of bourgeois culture in general.
7. A sense that objects out their in the world are strangely malign and have special
powers over human moods, desires, impulses and over a subjects fate/destiny.
8. The loss of an animated, enchanted state of identification with the world/
cosmos/nature, with others in society and with ones own needs and desires. Many
nineteenth century poets and thinkers described this stage as the loss of vision or as the
loss of the communal religious experience.
9. Physical feelings - long-lasting in nature - of being burdened, weighed down,
exhausted, by the normal activities/interactions of everyday existence.

Where a person blames others for this state of being or gives themselves wholly over to flight
from self, writers as diverse as Kierkegaard, Sartre, Schopenhauer, Camus and George Steiner
have spoken of 'normative', 'active' or sometimes 'bourgeois' ennui. Those who are to some extent
aware of their malaise are often deemed to be afflicted with 'creative boredom/ennui' or 'spiritual
ennui'. Since the nineteen century this form of l'ennui morbide has been characterised by an
additional symptom:


2
Such comparisons are more than coincidental, the discovery of the endogenous opiates in the mid 1970s highlighted
the fact that many people in having recourse to various substances and activities do so in order to self-inject
themselves with various internally manufactured opiates. It is now known that a large proportion of the human
psychobiological system is geared to pain management - physical and psychological. In due course this third stage
returned the person to the suffering of the first stage.

'Acedia, Tristitia and Sloth: Early Christian Forerunners to Chronic Ennui' by Ian Irvine, copyright, 1998-2013 all
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10. The feeling or intuition that society and its institutions are in some way connected to/
nurturant of, the particular experience of ennui suffering felt by a given subject - that
perhaps the norms of society in some way generate the malady. The artists and theorists
who have expressed this intuition sometimes link the phenomenon of subjective ennui to
the great economic, technological, social, political and religious changes that shook
Europe in the early modern period e.g. secularisation, urbanisation, industrialisation, the
rise of the bourgeoisie, bureaucratisation, the political revolutions of the period, the
scientific revolution etc.. From George Cheyne (The English Malady, 1733) onwards
symptoms associated with subjective ennui were linked to various kinds of socio-
cultural phenomena.
3


The connections of the concept with many other post-Enlightenment (usually secular)
concepts describing subjective disintegration, melancholia and psychic torment are many. It is no
understatement to suggest that variations on this relatively simple subjective cycle of
consciousness were at the core of many of the great nineteenth and early twentieth century
critiques of modernity. In this sense ennui in conjunction with other words has always had the
potential to launch a full-scale critique of Modernity. The perils facing the subject raised on
modernity may equally be the perils of the collective. George Steiner for example speaks of The
Great Ennui as a defining characteristic of post-traditional Western society in general - he sees it
as a central motivating force behind the many calamities of the twentieth century notably two
world wars, the ecological crisis, the technocratic tendencies of modern social structures, Anti-
Semitism and other forms of minority scapegoating and, finally, the advent of the atomic age.

Acedia: Forerunner to Chronic Ennui

Judging by the dearth of primary sources the problem of chronic ennui (then termed taedium
vitae) was not a major issue for classical writers and poets; other themes far and away dominated.
Among the Ancient Greeks the problem was virtually unheard of and it is only in the early
decades and centuries of the first millennium that the problem is mentioned with any degree of
alarm among Roman intellectuals. Likewise, what is reported is nothing like the mood of chronic
ennui as described by those that would follow.
4
It was only in the late Roman period that the
malaise of chronic ennui began to assert a major and continuous pull on the imaginations of the
literate - thanks mainly to the writings of the Desert Fathers of Christendom.
5

Whilst the Desert Fathers were developing specifically Christian perspectives on humanity's
psychospiritual relationship to God, self, society and the cosmos, they were also writing about a
new way of looking at psychospiritual suffering. Their writings formed the foundations of
Christianity's understandings of chronic ennui, foundations which stayed firm for almost one
thousand years.
6
Whether Christianity itself was the cause of the malady or whether it merely

3
Reinhard Kuhn (1976) in following this line suggests that ennui must be seen as the major subjective psychospiritual
malady that affected individuals in the early phases of modernity.
4
See Kuhn (1976, p.36 and p.39) and Healy (1984, p.16).
5
In particular the following figures and texts are seminal: Evagrius of Pontus' (b.345) Of the Eight Capital Sins, St.
John Chrysosthomos' Exhortations to Stagirius, Nilus' Treatise on the Eight Evil Spirits and Johanis Cassian's The
Foundations of Coenobitic Life and the Eight Capital Sins and Collationes (or Conversations).
6
Bloomfield's The Seven Deadly Sins (1952) is still one of the best discussions of the moral system behind medieval
Christianity. The best overview of chronic ennui's kindred term acedia as it figured in theological and religious texts
during the medieval period can be found in Wenzel's The Sin of Sloth: Acedia in Medieval Thought and Literature
(1967). For in depth discussion of the actual relationship between acedia and modern forms of ennui see Kuhn (1976,
Chapt. 3). Kuhn, like many commentators, sees the concept of acedia as a medieval subspecies of chronic ennui. In the
same context see Healy's (1984, p.17) comments on acedia: 'With the development of Christianity into a religion of the
people at large, the vice (of acedia) went through immense complexities of definition and attribution as it changed from

'Acedia, Tristitia and Sloth: Early Christian Forerunners to Chronic Ennui' by Ian Irvine, copyright, 1998-2013 all
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provided the most thorough diagnosis of chronic ennui for the age is open to debate,
7
but what is
certain is that during the 4th century AD there were certain crucial developments to classical
conceptions of taedium vitae. The horror loci and the various vices of diversion that the Romans
had associated with these two states of being were incorporated into a fundamentally Christian
view of the soul-affirming and soul-destroying passions. The developments led many people to
invent new terms to describe what they and others were feeling. In this sense, various modern
commentators have noted the fact that modern discussions of chronic ennui owe much to earlier
religious discussions of the temptation of acedia.
8

Of the many terms used at that time to describe states of consciousness similar to chronic
ennui - some of the most well known being tristitia, siccitas, desidia and pigritia (sloth) - the
word acedia came to predominate.
9
It now seems likely that some of the Desert Fathers
associated acedia with the dreaded 'noonday demon' of Psalm 90:6.
10
Indeed the hour of noon
seems to have been a particularly dangerous time for the solitary monks since when the noontide
demon arrived he often brought with him a whole host of additional temptations (viewed as
combinations of demons and evil thoughts, oiooi) which could assuage the monk's feelings
of chronic boredom and make him abandon the coenobitic life forever.
11

The concept of acedia thus denoted both a 'movement of the soul' and a specific 'evil spirit'.
In this sense it must be understood in relation to dualistic conceptions of humanity's place in the
cosmos current in the late Roman period. It is now known that the Desert Fathers drew on
dualistic tendencies inherent in Iranian, Hellenistic, Stoic, Gnostic and Judaic world-views to
formulate the so-called 'demonological' view of the capital sins or temptations. The
demonological system held that human actions in the world were influenced by both good and
bad angels or spirits. The bad spirits were believed to be under the control of Satan and the good
were said to be under God's control. The bad spirits skewed the innate passions (the to0q) in
non-life-affirming directions. They did this by inciting evil thoughts or passions (oiooi). Evil

being an exclusively eremitic affliction, an occupational hazard as it were, into a weakness capable of besetting any
Christian.'
7
Of those who have dealt with the historical questions raised by chronic ennui in general, and normative ennui in
particular, most have tended to ignore the earliest outbreaks of the malady and have instead concentrated on the
historical and social forces that contributed to the great epidemic of chronic ennui that struck Europe during the onset
of modernity. Only a few writers, in particular Kuhn (1976, pp.41-42), have approached the important question of just
why chronic ennui's ancestor malady 'acedia' took such a grip of the early Christian imagination. Kuhn cites the
rigorous spiritual lives experienced by the Desert Fathers; the fact that states of normality seemed rather boring in
comparison to the mystical heights to which the monks attempted to soar and, the actual arid surrounds in which the
monks lived as reasons. Such reasoning does not account for the fact that acedia became a base for - in Kuhn's words -
the 'secularisation' and 'universalisation' of the ennui malaise in the later medieval period. Nor does it solve for us the
question of whether Christianity as a cultural phenomenon could be blamed for the later explosion of the malady or
whether we should look elsewhere for the causes, ie. to economic and social factors or to other cultural factors.
8
Flaubert, Kierkegaard, Baudelaire, Racine, Balzac, Sainte-Beuve, Maurice Barrs, Marcelle Tinayre and Paul Bourget
have all written on or dramatised the connection between acedia and forms of chronic ennui. Kuhn (1976, p.42 and
p.55) discusses the many post-Enlightenment writers who had pointed to the connection. Healy (1984, pp.16-18) also
speaks of the historical dimensions to this connection. See also Clive's comments in (1965, p.359). He says chronic
ennui is "the acedia of the twentieth century - the experience of being 'condemned to freedom' in a world seemingly
devoid of objective values."
9
See Appendix One 'Etymology of Acedia, Ennui, Spleen and Boredom,' for a discussion of the point where acedia
took on cultural meanings similar to that of the modern day term chronic ennui.
10
See for example Cassian's comments (ed. Waddell, 1974, p.229) in De Institutis Coenobiorum (Foundations of
Coenobitic Life), 425 AD:
Our sixth contending is with that which the Greeks call o_qoio, and which we may describe as tedium or perturbation
of heart. ... some of the Fathers declare it to be the Demon of Noontide which is spoken of in the xcth Psalm.
11
Caillois (1937, pp.54-83 and pp.143-186) relates the Demon of Noontide to les dmons de midi, ie. various classical
spirits (mainly female) of mischief and temptation who made their presence felt around midday - eg sirens, nymphs,
harpies, nereids etc.

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thoughts, according to Evagrius,
12
could become attached in consciousness to remembered or
desired objects which thus became invested with destructive emotional energy, eg. gold could
become attached to a greedy state of mind. Such evil thoughts may eventually gain control of the
rational mind at which point non-life-affirming deeds might result. Every capital sin, temptation
or evil thought was attached to a specific demon or evil spirit. The Desert Fathers sought peace
(qou_io) from the incessant war between sin and virtue by trying to make the passions
subservient to the rational intellect. This state was known technically as oto0cio, which meant
'to be at one with God.' To many of the Desert Fathers acedia was one of the worst temptations
(demons) because it tried to make the monk give up the religious life completely. It was thus one
of the major hurdles to control of the passions and thus to the monk's salvation and desired union
with God.

(I) Cassian

Of the many descriptions of coenobitic acedia
13
perhaps the best summary of its early medieval
characteristics is to be found in Cassian's De Institutis Coenobiorum (Foundations of Coenobitic
Life) where acedia figures as the sixth of the eight major temptations.
14
In this work the older
classical descriptions of taedium vitae, melancholy and black gall are clearly reworked to fit into
a specifically Christian framework. Various symptoms are discussed many of which replicate
classical symptoms of chronic ennui, eg. horror loci, inexplicable sadness, addiction to objects
(luxuria) and a certain desire to do anything rather than confront the negative emotional forces
(temptations) which were trying to possess one's being:

Our sixth contending is with that which the Greeks call 'a-kedia' (from a-, 'not'; kedos, 'care') and
which we may describe as tedium or perturbation of heart. It is akin to dejection [tristitia], and
especially felt by wandering monks and solitaries, a persistent and obnoxious enemy to such as
dwell in the desert, disturbing monks especially about midday, like a fever mounting at a regular
time, and bringing its highest tide of inflammation at definite accustomed hours to the sick soul ...
When this besieges the unhappy mind, it begets aversion from the place, boredom with one's
cell, and scorn and contempt for one's brethren, whether they be dwelling with one or some way
off, as careless and unspiritually minded persons. Also, towards any work that may be done within
the enclosure of our own lair, we become listless and inert. It will not suffer us to stay in our cell,
or to attend to our reading: we lament that in all this while, living in the same spot, we have made
no progress, we sigh and complain that bereft of sympathetic fellowship we have no spiritual fruit;
and bewail ourselves as empty of all spiritual profit ... and we that could guide others ... have
edified no man, enriched no man with our precept and example. We praise other and far distant
monasteries, describing them as more helpful to one's progress, more congenial to one's soul's
health ... Finally we conclude that there is no health for us so long as we stay in this place, short of
abandoning the cell wherein to tarry further will be only to perish with it, and betaking ourselves
elsewhere as quickly as possible.
Towards eleven o'clock or midday, it induces such lassitude of body and craving for food as
one might feel after ... hard toil. Finally one gazes anxiously here and there, and sighs that no
brother of any description is to be seen approaching: one is for ever in and out of one's cell, gazing
at the sun as though it were tarrying to its setting: one's mind is in an irrational confusion ... one is
slothful and vacant in every spiritual activity, and no remedy, it seems, can be found for this state
of siege than a visit from some brother, or the solace of sleep. Finally our malady suggests that in
common courtesy one should salute the brethren, and visit the sick, near and far. It dictates such

12
Evagrius, 'Texts on Discrimination in Respect of Passions and Thoughts' (1983, pp.38-52).
13
See the Checklist of Authors for comments on the theme of acedia/ennui as it relates to the works of Nilus, St. John
Chrysosthomos, St. Jerome and Evagrius of Pontius.
14
For comments on the role of acedia as the 'Demon of Noontide' in The Foundations of Coenobitic Life and The Eight
Capital Sins see Wenzel (1967, Chapts. 1 and 2.). See also Rivers (1955, p.293) and Revers (1949), espec. Chapt. 1
'Die Acedia bei Johannes Cassianus'.

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offices of duty and piety as to seek out this relative or that ... far better to bestow one's pious
labour upon these than sit without benefit, or profit in one's cell.
15


This demon is said to work "hand in hand with the fifth demon 'Dejection' " which also has
much in common, at the symptom level, with various forms of malevolent boredom. We also note
similarities between the state described and modern forms of depression.
The modern secular mind might hastily jump to the conclusion that the monks were bored for
good reason and that the desire to flee their cells was merely a natural response to the absurdities
of an ascetic lifestyle. Such a conclusion does not account for the fact that these states of
consciousness were, in a sense, courted by the monks. The demons had to be brought out of
hiding, so as to speak, before one could truly experience oto0cio (spiritual oneness with God by
control of the passions by the rational mind). The monks very probably chose such inhospitable
surrounds and such an arduous lifestyle as a means to bring on a state of spiritual catharsis. They
perhaps sought to improve themselves by a series of confrontations with aspects of their lives
which normal living kept submerged. In this sense the goals of their practices could be seen (with
certain reservations) as creative and thus in opposition to normative forms of ennui. The very fact
that the fathers spent so much time and energy trying to sort out the destructive passions from the
'angelic' ones might suggest that acute forms of normative ennui existed outside religious circles
and that perhaps some people opted for the ascetic life as a means of overcoming such addictive
and ultimately destructive states of being.
Cassian's other work, Collationes, or Conversations (425AD) also deals with acedia as
experienced by the Desert Fathers. Particularly relevant is the interview with Father Daniel, one
of the Desert Fathers. What emerges from the conversation is the idea that chronic boredom is
something through which one passes in order to experience new heights of spiritual oneness with
God. Something like the 'creative', solitary ennui of later artists, poets and writers, and the
spiritual ennui of shamans, priests/priestesses and mystics of many traditions seems to be the
goal. Cassian has one of the monks relate the following experience:

We feel overwhelmed, crushed by dejection [tristitia] for which we can find no motif. The very
source of mystic experiences is dried up ... the train of thought becomes lost, inconstant and
bewildered ... We complain, we try to remind our spirit of its original goals. But in vain. Sterility
of the soul! And neither the longing for Heaven nor the fear of Hell are capable of shaking our
lethargy.
16


Pope Gregory I (The Great) wrote his Morals on the Book of Job some 150 years after
Cassian's Foundations and Collationes. In the process, he added the final touches to the medieval
idea of acedia. He reduced the number of capital sins from eight to seven in the process merging
tristitia and acedia into one sin. He also helped universalise the ideas of the Desert Fathers since
he wrote for a larger audience. As a result, all Christendom came to believe that the Capital Sins
were central to the Christian moral system. One of those sins was the temptation of acedia which
would later take the title of sloth.
17
In the process of its universalisation the solitary, sometimes
excruciating and cathartic, confrontation between the self and the Demon of Noontide gradually
lost its emphasis as a mode of attaining salvation. Despite centuries of pronounced theological
debate there were few alterations to the concept of acedia from this period on.
18


The Efficacy of Demonological Approaches to Acedia

15
Cassian (ed. Waddell, 1946, pp.229-231).
16
Johanis Cassian, Collationes [or Conversations] (425AD) [IV, 2].
17
See Kuhn (1976, pp.54-55) for comments regarding the contribution of Gregory The Great and his work Morals On
the Book of Job to medieval and modern conceptions of acedia and chronic ennui.
18
Readers who wish to take up all aspects of the theological debate over acedia as it manifested in Scholasticism and
later medieval monasticism are directed to Wenzel (1967, especially Chapt. 3).

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In surveying the numerous early Medieval texts concerned with acedia it seems clear that it was
indeed an early form of morbid ennui. In this sense I agree with Kuhn's conclusions.
19
Many of
the symptoms described as indicative of acedia (eg horror loci; tedium vitae; chronic depression;
unwarranted sadness; crippling lethargy; lack of joy; lack of feeling at peace in the universe;
addiction to activities, objects, states of mind etc. which give no true fulfilment; the constant
desire to flee from ascending states of deep anxiety by resort to such addictions; and, lack of
mystic vision or imagination
20
), certainly carried over into later descriptions of the various forms
of chronic boredom.
The spiritual techniques (fasting, prayer and solitude) by which the demon of acedia was
made to manifest, and the internal conflicts which the Church Fathers experienced and described
in their works, seem to have much in common with shamanic and religious practices endemic to
many other world traditions (traditional shamans, for instance, routinely confronted various
demons, devils and spirits of discord and decay).
21
In more recent times many artists and poets
have described their sufferings at the hands of chronic ennui in terms of cathartic and mystical
imagery similar to that used by the Desert Fathers. The confrontation with such destructive
psychospiritual forces is usually done for the purpose of purifying the self and thus of protecting
the community from the harms that could result from the passions turned noxious. One confronts
the abyss, the via negativa, in order to become spiritually and emotionally whole.
22
The states of
chronic ennui associated with such a confrontation are far removed from the forms of the malaise
that currently afflict Western civilisation - what I have labelled 'normative ennui'. So prevalent is
the malady of 'normative ennui' in the West today that people who see value in contemplation, in
spiritual and creative disciplines designed to improve themselves emotionally, are derided and
even stigmatised as lazy and non-productive.
It is quite possible that the early Church Fathers were confronting a malaise nurtured by the
great urban centres of the age. They were, perhaps, taking on a disease nurtured by empire - by
urbanisation and bureaucratisation. Such a reading would suggest that they were taking on powers
that would one day station themselves at the very centre of Western civilisation. If so, the
showdown between the Demon of Noontide and the monks of the new religion in the arid
wastelands of the African deserts is one of the most neglected psychospiritual events of Western
history.
We are led to perhaps the most important question: did medieval Christianity nurture or
counteract acedia? The question is important for any modern assessment of chronic ennui,

19
Kuhn (1976, pp.53-64) makes a strong case for the similarities between acedia and modern forms of chronic ennui.
20
Though chronic ennui is rarely these days associated with specifically Christian perceptions of the absence of joy or
inspiration, the idea that human beings have lost touch with 'spiritual powers', however vaguely imagined, remains.
21
Roccatagliata (1986, p.4) argues that the exorcism of demons by resort to solitude, fasting, drugs, intense prayer
chanting/singing, dance has long been central to 'demonological' approaches to mental illness. He says that at the time
the church fathers were writing, mythological, animistic, biological and humoral approaches to 'disturbances of the
soul' were more or less in decline in favour of the Christian demonological system. According to Roccatagliata, (p.14),
the Church Fathers and the church Apologists 'unified animistic and sacred outlooks, as well as the mystical ideologies
led by Orpheus, Pythagorus, and the philosophies of Plato and the Stoics' in order to create their new approach. It is
thus likely that some of the Church Fathers saw themselves as what we would term 'therapists' in relation to both the
major psychological disturbances of the age and the more existential disturbances of the soul experienced by 'normal'
people. Both types of unease merge in the concept of acedia, both had a spiritual solution, exorcism of the evil spirits in
the name of the Christian deity. Such a reading of the struggles of the Desert Fathers would suggest that their ennui was
more similar to what I have called 'creative ennui' than to the other major ennui categories, ie. 'dysfunctional' or
'normative' ennui.
22
Kuhn (1976, p.45) also points to the cathartic element in the practices of the early Church Fathers. In particular, he
speaks of the relationship between acedia and the via negativa: "... acedia is almost a precondition for a life of eternal
bliss ... it is the 'noche oscura del alma' that lay between Saint John of the Cross and divine grace.... The via negativa
that passes through acedia is a road fraught with hazards and with promises. It represents 'a dangerous proving ground
through which the soul can purify itself and sometimes it serves as a prelude to the joys and beatitude of ecstasy.'"

'Acedia, Tristitia and Sloth: Early Christian Forerunners to Chronic Ennui' by Ian Irvine, copyright, 1998-2013 all
rights reserved.
9
especially since George Steiner has recently suggested that this secular version of acedia is still,
essentially, a religious problem.
23

My own position on these early Christian commentaries concerned with the causes and cures
for the problem is ambivalent. It could be argued that in the shift from the often solitary
confrontation with acedia in the inhospitable deserts of Northern Africa to the universalised
confrontation with it characteristic of the later medieval period (diagnosed for all Christians under
the title of sloth) there was lost that element of catharsis which has been encouraged by many
traditional peoples to treat states of psychospiritual disintegration. In my opinion, the switch over
represented the end of serious attempts by mainstream, institutional Christianity to tackle the
ennui/acedia malaise. From about 1200 on the mystics, poets and artists of the West took up the
struggle instead.
From an ethical perspective the confrontations with ennui experienced by the early Church
Fathers were conditioned by a specific kind of religious belief system, a system that often
confused noxious passions with perfectly healthy ones and which privileged masculine forms of
the rational intellect over the body (particularly the functions of the female body). In this sense
some of the acedia experienced by the monks must be attributed to their attempts to live basically
'passionless lives', ie. to reify their experience of the lifeworld and live instead in the world of
reason and the spirit. Consequently, they may have treated one form of chronic ennui (normative
ennui) with a religious form of the same malaise. This may be part of the reason that Christianity
has essentially been unable to defeat the joylessness associated with the various forms of the
ailment. It is a failing, I believe, peculiar to the moral systems developed by the monotheistic
religions.
The monks were fine psychologists, however, and it is clear that on many occasions they saw
acedia and the other capital temptations as distortions of otherwise life-affirming passions. If
there is one essential lesson to be learnt from their writings it is that we should respect the power
and subtlety of the malaise they confronted in their own beings. The Demon of Noontide was no
push over - it could erode the will, afflict the body and darken a person's emotional terrain with
depression, madness and thoughts of suicide. It could also offer escape from cathartic
confrontation with self by insinuating into consciousness all manner of unauthentic desires,
pseudo-needs, fantasies of relief which, though serving to ward off the worst excesses of acedia,
could ultimately lead only to spiritual ruin. In this sense the courage of the Desert Fathers as they
attempted to name and confront this subtle and destructive psychospiritual entity surely deserves
our admiration if not our awe. For this reason alone the writings of the Desert Fathers must surely
contribute something to our attempts to understand modern forms of chronic ennui. If Rome can
be seen as the origin of the concept of 'normative ennui' then the deserts of northern Africa may
be seen as the site of the first major creative and spiritual response to that malaise.

Postscript: Postmodernist Ennui

Early Christian descriptions of acedia and related vices did not view 'society' as the cause of
subjective suffering described. This is in sharp contradistinction to most modern descriptions of
acedia's progeny terms, i.e. chronic ennui, anomie, alienation, etc. Romantic, modernist and
postmodern uses of these words invariably deal with the idea that something is wrong with the
link between the self and the other of society. In this sense such concepts often represent an
implicit critique of modernity. The depression, languer, melancholy that characterised nineteenth
century ennui contradicted the great Enlightenment bourgeois ideals of progress, competition,
scientific and technological advancement and social evolution in general - ennui played gollum to
the sturdy hobbit of liberalism.

23
See my analysis of In Bluebeard's Castle in my PhD. thesis entitled 'Uncomfortably Numb: The Emergence of the
Normative Ennui Cycle' (1998, chapt. 8).

'Acedia, Tristitia and Sloth: Early Christian Forerunners to Chronic Ennui' by Ian Irvine, copyright, 1998-2013 all
rights reserved.
10
Understanding the enormous implications of our current distrust of the social apparatus may
allow us to better define and illustrate the immensity of the new crisis of the subject currently
afflicting Western societies. In this new phase chronic ennui has become associated with
schizophrenic, depressive, narcissistic and psychopathic symptoms and with what Bouchez
(1973) terms the 'de-realisation' of subjective life characteristic of late twentieth century life.'
How relevant then are terms like taedium vitae, acedia, tristitia, siccitas, saturnine
melancholy, 'The English Malady', l'ennui morbide, etc. to discussions of the postmodern
maladies of the subject? I would argue that chronic ennui is more virulent than ever in the
postmodernist phase of our society (though different in character to earlier outbreaks). It can be
argued that postmodernist ennui represents a specific disintegrative response to the particular
social formations characteristic of advanced capitalism and globalisation in general.
It is my argument that the fragmentation of the subject occasioned by the new phase of
modernity (sometimes called high modernity or postindustrialism) lies on a continuum with,
but is qualitatively different to, earlier states of subjective suffering. The web of society and
culture that is supposed to help sustain peoples material and psycho-spiritual needs is perhaps
more toxic than ever to the real psychospiritual needs of subjects. In this new phase the norms of
the social web bespeak an advanced state of normative schizophrenia and psychopathology. If we
wish to find a way out of the soul-destroying routines of the postmodern ennui cycle with its
consumerist addictions (see Perec's, Things), its narcissism and love of empty spectacle, its insane
hunger for more and more objects to fill up the void of life without meaning, I would suggest that
we re-assess the long tradition of writings on the maladies of the subject. We might ask ourselves
where exactly the Desert Fathers went wrong, and just as importantly, where they were on the
right track. Like George Steiner in his work on the 'Great Ennui' in In Bluebeard's Castle (1971),
we might admit that our current maladies of the subject (and their social manifestations) are
deeply related to the more general problem of the history of human spirituality. If this is the case,
and I believe it is, then the battle between the Desert Fathers and the Demon of Noontide is of the
utmost significance to modern discussions of the history of subjectivity.








Author Bio (as at March 2013)

Dr. Ian Irvine is an Australian-based poet/lyricist, writer and non-fiction writer.
His work has featured in publications as diverse as Humanitas (USA), The
Antigonish Review (Canada), Tears in the Fence (UK), Linq (Australia) and
Takahe (NZ), among many others. His work has also appeared in two Australian
national poetry anthologies: Best Australian Poems 2005 (Black Ink Books) and
Agenda: Australian Edition, 2005. He is the author of three books and co-editor
of three journals Scintillae 2012, The Animist ezine (7 editions, 1998-2001) and
Painted Words (8 editions 2005-2013). Ian currently teaches in the Professional
Writing and Editing program at BRIT (Bendigo, Australia) as well as the same
program at Victoria University, St. Albans, Melbourne. He has also taught history
and social theory at La Trobe University (Bendigo, Australia) and holds a PhD for his work on creative, normative and
dysfunctional forms of alienation and morbid ennui. In his recent theoretical work he has attempted to develop an anti-
oppressive approach to creative writing based upon the integration of Cultural-Relational theories concerning self in
relation with Jungian and Groffian models of the collective or transpersonal unconscious.